The Best Lyric Vids of the Week: Volume XVI

As we enter the 16th week of the year’s best weekly crop of lyric videos, artists, from indie to major, are getting all sorts of cinematic with the medium. From Tegan and Sara‘s urban heartache pop drama to Theophilus London‘s aqua-soul homage to Rio de Janeiro, listening with your eyes never felt so good.

Ah relationships, they never really die. So goes the narrative brought back to life from Tegan and Sara’s galactic pop reach, Heartthrob, and the most self-deprecating moments of that silly emotion called love. The video, courtesy of a Warner Bros bankroll, is pretty damn great in letting the protagonist wallow in her foolish ways, styled like the opening credits of an HBO drama, with lyrics subtly laced:

Curious breed of Parisians, these kids. You wouldn’t know it with The Goonies references and New Found Glory panache, nor this teen dream of a cosmic-bowling, testosterone fueled romp of block-lettering and need for speed staccato riffs, but it’s true. And they probably now where to find a mean croissant, along where their carpe diem fist-pumps:

I’m here to take the best of what I’m living
And I don’t plan on losing it
I take my chance every single night
And every single day
Before we start fading away

Following similar light-diffused aesthetics as its “Born to Kill‘ original single Desperate Ground counterpart, power-pop Saddle Creek threats, The Thermals, may not be breaking the mold here with putting lyric to screen, but sometimes simple is best, especially with a hook like “our live survives:”

Our lives survives, It will always be
No matter if we die, or live eternally
Our love survives

Post-Layne Staley Alice in Chains 2.0 sludges on with its fifth album The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here and this pseudo murder-mystery – its protagonist opens her eyes in the end of the vid – freak out, montaging a winter creek scene with an assault of super defined, contrast-blasted images of torn books, trees, bark and the like. Like Tegan and Sara, the lyrics are tasteful on the eyes, particularly that shot of a pink brush aside “still move:”

Trinidad-born Brooklynite Theophilus London once more ups the cinematic treatment with a grainy filter on some beautiful time-lapse footage taken from the title’s namesake, Rio de Janeiro, as its tale of lust chases soul-pop strides and the lyrics roll out beneath the magic like subtitles – a concrete jungle spectacle:

Even if your in rio de janeiro
Ill give you all my
Affection affection
Making it easy, when your lonely
You can just call me, ill be there

About Gavin Paul

Gavin Paul is SONGLYRICS' Editor-in-Chief. Chicago-bred, New York-sculpted, his words and ideas have appeared in publications ranging from Spin and Rolling Stone to The Chicago Sun-Times and Arborist News.